Feliz Natal!

Merry Christmas to all our Family and Friends. We miss you all the time, but especially today. This was a very low-key day for us, with a small number of gifts to open in the morning and the rest spent indoors playing with toys, reading books and watching a few Christmas shows. I managed to cook a turkey - but pretty much only because the restaurants were all closed on the island. We drank a nice bottle of wine (John looked at the bottle of Malbec and said 'hey, Grandpa Barry left his beer here'). It was great to stay in our pajamas and just enjoy our time together, but being without the rest of the family makes us realize how much more fun it is to have everyone else around.

The kids were happy that Santa left some blow-up floaties under the tree - perfect for floating on the lake or riding the waves here.

John received some night-vision goggles and immediately put them to use. I woke from a deep sleep to find him standing next to me, watching me sleep through his night-vision goggles. Bo-ring.

On the evening of the 23rd, we headed to downtown Florianopolis for the Christmas parade. Despite our getting lost, having difficulty finding a parking spot, suffering through a horrendous and expensive dinner, plus a sudden umbrella-less violent rainstorm, I'm pretty sure we wound up enjoying the parade. We got lost again on the way home.

Scenes from the Christmas parade - the main square was all decked in holiday lights.

Enjoying the beach on Christmas Eve day....the kids built a 'sandman'.

Spent the morning in the lake - just floating around....finished my book. Lovely.

Possibly the best story of the day came when Carina unwrapped a small make-up set that mommy had given her. "Oh, just what I always wanted," she screeched with delight on seeing the pretty pink box. Not having seen this gift before, Daddy asked her, "Oh, what is it?" To which she replied without missing a beat, "I don't know." :-)

The other real delight came on Christmas eve when the kids blessed us with some Christmas carols while standing by the tree. Click below to have a listen.

Christmas caroling

Holiday Home

We have finally arrived at our holiday home, where we will be staying for the next three weeks. Florianopolis is a small island - 33 miles long - located in the southeast of Brazil, about 450 miles down the coast from Rio. As far as we can tell, it appears to be a vacation paradise, with more than 50 odd beaches to choose from, each with its own personality and crowd. The house we are in fronts the Lagoa, a brackish lake separated from the ocean by a canal. The lake is enormous and down at the southern end where we are, never gets deeper than waist-high. The water is crystal clear and pristine with a lovely sandy bottom. The picture above was taken on the first night we arrived, harried and hassled from a long day. We took off our clothes and walked out....and kept walking. Anthony had time to drink a beer and snap this picture of us from our backyard before he came out to join us. It was as if this very sunset was our own private show. Incredible. By late afternoon the water is warmer than a bathtub, so that when you get out the gentle breeze is cooling. In the morning, the lake water has cooled down overnight and is completely refreshing as the sun gets hotter and hotter overhead.

Lest our friends in the dreary, dark cold North resent us too much, I will admit that the kitchen here is full of ants (the cute kind) and, of course, the internet is S-L-O-W. Otherwise, things are pretty well perfect and the only difficulty is deciding which beach to visit today.

The kids are adapting really well to life here. They go to bed late (10:30 last night!) and sleep in late (9:15 - still sleeping!). They've made some new discoveries - they are both big fans of 'beach cheese' or 'queijo coalhado' - which can be found up and down the coast of Brazil. Vendors walk along the beach singing their wares and when you signal them, they light a little portable charcoal grill and roast a stick of delicious salty white cheese for you. It sounds a little counter-intuitive...hot, salty cheese on a hot, salty (sandy!) beach but the overall effect is amazing. They must have eaten half a kilo of the stuff yesterday.

Our love to all of you!

Prepping for the Holidays and Beyond

With the school year coming to a close, we are about to begin the nomadic stage of our time in Brazil. We give up the security of our little house in Campinas tomorrow and begin roaming the countryside. Though we have only been here for 4 months, “Casa Oito” has served us well.

Lot’s of things, like baths, had to be improvised as we adjusted to Brazil.

But, all in all, it’s served both human and monkey well.

Our last days have been busy packing and getting ready for travels. We have put some stuff in storage, sold off the small appliances and other things that we purchased for the house, and have packed the rest to travel. John has also been busy. He’s sold all of his duplicate “Go-Go’s”, small plastic characters that he has been collecting. In a complete shocker to us, he came back yesterday with R$15 in his pocket after going door-to-door in the neighborhood selling his toys.

In between packing and cleaning, we have also had some time to get ready for the holidays. We saw Santa in the mall the other day. CC decided that a ride on a motorcycle was more interesting than meeting with Santa.

But John had a long list of things to work through with Santa. No worries that this Santa spoke only Portuguese, somehow they worked things out.

Grandma & Grandpa in Rio

We had our first American guests last week as Amy’s parents spent the week with us in Brazil. After a quick tour of Campinas, we all flew to Rio de Janeiro for a bit of fun and frolicking.

Rio is an interesting city, a huge metropolis and yet life revolves around its famous beaches. After John saw this carioca taking donations for his impressive sand castle art, he tried the same strategy at a smaller scale. Unfortunately he wasn’t as successful at drumming up donations.

We had a great time. At night we visited some nice restaurants, small neighborhoods, and the Copacabana beach front.

And by day we did a bit of sightseeing. The cable car ride to the top of Sugarloaf is always a thrill.

And despite it being overcast on the day we visited, we had a nice time relaxing in the clouds at the top of the mountain.

On our final day there, we had the perfect weather for ice cream at the beach. CC also tried out for a new Coppertone sunscreen ad – we are still waiting on the callback.

It was great catching up and having guests. If anyone else is looking to spend a week in Brazil – we would love to have you.

Floating down the River

We just received some photos from the tourism agency we hired during our trip to the springs up in Nobres, up north of the Pantanal.  It was a good thing that the guide who accompanied us (everyone who visits the region must have a guide) brought a camera - and underwater, at that - as ours broke several weeks back when we got caught outside in a heavy rainstorm.  Enjoy the pictures - I promise they don't do justice to our amazing experience snorkeling down the river....

Ready to hit the river.....there was no one else there that day and the area was very wild...with dense jungle and the sounds of monkeys and macaws in the trees overhead.

trying to get a nice family shot....apparently John was not in the mood to cooperate

The walk down to the river was beautiful....

Carina testing out the water...it was a little cold and as soon as we stepped in,
hundreds of little fish swam up all around us

You were supposed to keep your feet off the ground at all times so as to not disturb the limestone sediment.
Because the river was shallow and we knew this would be difficult for Carina, we brought her tube so she could just sit in it and float down.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not convince John to put on his mask and snorkle and stick his head
under the water.....sigh.  Truly though, the water was so crystal clear you could easily see everything from above the surface.

Testing our gear in a little pool before entering the river where the fast
current would carry us quickly downstream.  Once we started, the current was swift enough that it was very
hard to stop.  There were a few fallen trees in the water along the way, and it was possible to climb
up on them to take a break and regroup.

Totally clear water due to the enormous quantity of limestone in the ground, which acts as a natural filter so that
impurities are deposited at the bottom of the river, leaving the water totally transparent.  

We weren't sure what John was going to think, as the river was moving pretty fast
and he wasn't supposed to touch the bottom - in fact, in many places he couldn't as it was too deep or
the current was too swift.  He absolutely loved it - as soon as he got in he told us it was 'amazing'.  It was a long
ride down - about 45 minutes and no stopping - so he was very cold by the end.

Sunrise on the Pantanal

We took a quickly planned trip to the Brazilian Pantanal this past week. What an incredible place. The Pantanal is the world’s largest wetland, equivalent in size to the State of California. While its nearby neighbor the Amazon gets all of the press, the Pantanal is the place to see wildlife in Brazil.

Our trip started with a flight to Cuiaba, a small city at the northeastern edge of the Pantanal. Cuiaba is funny, a bit remote, yet a bit noisy and urban. From Cuiaba we hired a car to take us the 100 or so kilometers down the trans-Pantanal “highway,” and I use the term loosely as much of it is a two-lane dirt road. Our lodge, the Fazenda Curicaca, was about 3 kilometers down a rutted dirt driveway near the eastern edge of the trans-Pantanal.

Fazenda Curicaca was a great find. It was a former cattle ranch, but unlike many of the other Fazendas in this area that are still cattle ranches, this land was allowed to revert back to its natural state 6 or so years ago. As a result, you feel very much like you are in the wild; and judging by the wildlife, they feel the same way. There are green parrots, blue macaws, storks the size of dogs, and dozens of other birds that live in the trees around the cabins. The Fazenda keeps a green parrot as a pet. She took a liking to me on our first day there and climbed up on my shoulder. She liked it so much, in fact, that she wouldn’t get down. It was only after one of the guides came and grabbed her (as she clenched her claws into my shoulder) that she finally got off.

In addition to birds, caiman abound in this area. In fact, during the trip to the Fazenda we stopped at a mud hole that was drying up (as this is the dry season) and at least 50 caiman were crammed into the small mud pit.

The Fazenda itself sat on the bank of a small river that remains wet year-round and the caiman are common here as well. One of them, they refer to her as Loira, frequents the bank on the side of the river near the Fazenda to sun herself.

There were all sorts of other wildlife too. Tapirs roam the ground in the evening as they like a strange plum-like palm fruit that falls from the trees and litters the walkways. And howler and capuchin monkeys swing from the trees. The only problem with the howlers is they tend to wake up at about 4 AM and begin grunting so loudly that you would swear an elephant-sized monster was in the middle of your cabin. Turn up the volume when you listen to this:

Howler Monkeys in the Pantanal

One afternoon we took a boat ride up the river. The birds were spectacular and about a quarter mile up river we saw a family of giant river otters. While we were delighted to see them, I don’t think they were very happy to see us as they barked at us for the 2 minutes that we stopped to look. The river also abounds with fish. And John and CC were giddy about catching piranha and other small fish in the river.

We had one extra day in Cuiaba after returning from the Pantanal so decided to take a trip to the city of Nobres. Nobres is in a mountainous region that is high in mineral salts like calcium and magnesium. The salts actually help to precipitate any soil or sediment in the rivers in the area, and so the waterways look as if they are Disneyland swimming pools – they are crystal clear. If you look closely, you can make out hundreds of small minnows swimming in the water just next to John in the picture below.

One of the highlights of this trip was that we happened to see a band of capuchin monkeys on our way the park and our guide pulled out a bunch of bananas. The monkeys in the area are almost as tame as Central Park squirrels, and after a minute or two were taking bananas right out of our hands.